


tempo rubato

by buckstiel



Category: Campaign (Podcast), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Ballroom Dancing, Cameos, Cruise Ships, Denial of Feelings, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, The Force, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-03 18:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17288885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: Blue: There's a lot of pomp and circumstance. And you look great in heels.Zero: Don't tell me I look great in heels. I know I look great in heels, all right?A disastrous origin of a now-known quantity and the remains of it in the aftermath of the gala.





	tempo rubato

**Author's Note:**

> this has been a work in progress since the ep 11 of evil campaign first went up but getting myself to write has been like this one mini game they made us play at band camp in college every year where you had to blow a ping pong ball across a carpeted floor because i could never seem to get it going until i got the angle just right and then it started zipping along out of control.
> 
> hence: this.
> 
> campaign: i love you always.  
> campaign twitter: the same, and then some.

The luxury cruise liner left in four standard days’ time, and Minister Blue had gotten them all tickets, fanned out before them triumphantly like a hand of Pure Sabacc. 

“This isn’t a gift,” he said just as Zero’s helmet flashed a question mark. “And it’s not a vacation. I would think you’d know better than to expect a comped vacation.”

“So…” Aava said slowly. “It’s a job? You’re giving us our next assignment with this…” Her shoulders heaved with a sigh, and with a vague look of disdain she took in the whole sight of the physical tickets, Blue’s smirk, and the odd pose he struck on the chair. “This level of theatrics...how are you feeling, Synox?”

Synox said nothing. Maybe his lip twitched, but that could have been a trick of the light. 

Blue, too, said nothing of the sort either way before the _Bluebird_ ’s war room lit up with the holo schematics of the mission--a cruise liner setting off on the massive Pantolomin seas, catered by the galaxy’s finest chefs for the galaxy’s wealthiest clientele, with entertainment ranging from Sy Snootles to Aurodia Ventafoli. 

“--whoever they are,” Blue said, flipping through a number of slides on his datapad and muttering to himself about how insipid pop music was. It was something they’d all heard before and no one dared interject lest he subject them all to the full speech. “Aha--here.” 

The cruise liner disappeared and taking its place was a collection of what Aava could only assume were rebels based off the hard gleam in Blue’s eyes and the sad state of their attire. One of the party, a human, looked barely twelve; the others, two Twi’leks and a Gran with a missing eyestalk, stood around him almost protectively. 

“These rebels have been particularly troublesome,” Blue continued, “the kid especially.” He glanced at each of them in turn over the top of his glasses as if he were daring them to assume anything based on age. 

Zero must have--through their secret comms channel everyone in their sector of the Death Star knew about, undoubtedly. Even if Blue hadn’t pursed his lips and Zero hadn’t responded in kind with a winking emoji for all to see, she would have bet money on it. 

(She _had_ bet money on it, before. Synox still owed her fifty credits.) 

“At any rate,” Synox said pointedly, “We received intelligence that they are going undercover on this cruise to make an exchange with a heretofore unknown group of rebels.”

He paused. Still Blue and Zero stared silently at each other, only the grin in Zero’s winking emoji had grown into a High Galactic capital D. 

It was a wonder the Empire got anything done at all.

“The higher-ups aren’t as interested in what they are exchanging as much as they are in this other group.” Synox’s scar twitched where there used to be an eyebrow. “Our assignment is, at the very least, to identify these rebels; ideally, we would bring in both groups, but given Pantolomin’s popularity as a vacation destination for regional governors and moffs, they have advised discretion.”

A beat--“Fan- _tastic_ ,” Blue said, coughing to cover up a slight crack in his voice as he gathered his belongings to leave. “We’ll be there by tonight. Make yourselves presentable. That means _casual_ , Commander Synox. This is supposed to look like a vacation--”

“But sir--”

The doors had already slid shut behind him.

“If it’s not a vacation…” Synox trailed off.

Aava wished he would let himself massage that twitching muscle--it couldn’t have been comfortable, and it would have given Zero one less thing to stare at when she was trying to will his attention over her way. 

Not with the Force. Not for something this--admittedly--petty. So subtlety she had to abandon. “What was all that about?”

“What?”

“Not you, Sy,” she said. She arched an eyebrow at Zero and his now-blank helmet display. “Well?” 

Zero was hard to read with the helmet obscuring his face and multiple cybernetic implants screwing around with his Force signature. The normal tug-and-shove of emotions in a room bent around him at odd angles, fritzing even further past normal whenever the sharp points of Blue’s neuroses butted up against him. He was easygoing enough, so even on a surface level his commitment to Blue was inexplicable. The money must have been unbelievable.

Sighing, Zero got up and strode to the same door where Blue made his exit. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “It’s just almost too easy.” 

 

* 

 

The cruise liner had barely left the pier, but Aava was already on her third black nebula.

“I fear…” Blue said under his breath. 

“Oh, we _all_ fear now, buddy,” Aava muttered.

“I fear we may have made a mistake.” 

The ship’s combination dining and ballroom where they and the rest of the passengers were milling about was festooned with garish red and silver streamers with matching confetti sprinkled at every table and an enormous banner across the entryway welcoming everyone to the Fifth Annual Imperial Margengai-Glide Competition. 

“Are we sure the--the uh, _rebels_ ,” Zero whispered, “are even here? Was the intel wrong? Literally everyone else here is involved with the competition.” 

“The intel was not wrong. I think our informant perhaps did not have all the pieces of the puzzle.” Synox stiffly adjusted his button-down Scarifian top and made like he was going to shove his fists into his pockets before reconsidering. The entire ensemble was hideous and ill-fitting, the bright florals of the shirt clashing against the olive camouflage cargo shorts. 

“I--Jakar…” Blue flexed his knobbly hands until they no longer instinctively retracted into fists. 

“Who?” 

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. A smile plastered itself onto his face, straining the corners of his mouth. “We have an Empire to serve, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

He flagged the bartender down and ordered another round of black nebulas.

“Sir--”

“After this round, Sy.”

It was the first sensible thing he’d said around Aava since she’d met him.

One round turned into another, which turned into two more, and while Pantolomin equipped all its ships with stabilizers to prevent seasickness, the ground beneath their feet tilted anyway. Or: at least it did for Aava, and as far as she could tell, no one else was faring much better. They had moved from their conspicuous station at the center of the bar to one of the round glitter-laden tables in the corner, sprawling across all eight available chairs less from an attempt to keep others from joining them than an incomplete awareness of what their limbs were up to.

Blue’s face was flushed a deep crimson from the booze and Zero couldn’t stop staring.

Blue himself, on the other hand, was completely turned in the opposite direction, competing with Synox for the attention of the Nautolan woman with her arms draped around another clone sitting at the neighboring table. Something about the situation struck her as off--the shouting wasn’t good, no, she ought to do something about that, and Synox was never this touchy-feely with anyone. And--

“Our entry into the competition?” Blue half-slurred. His hand flopped and landed on one of the Nautolan’s head-tresses that had slipped from the greater bundle and down her shoulder.

Oh, this was bad. This was very, very bad.

The black nebulas gummed up her entire body. All she could do was watch.

“That’d be me,” Synox proudly declared, leaning in toward the Nautolan’s clone partner, chin in hand.

“And, ah--” Blue glanced at Aava, winced, and then nodded at Zero. “Him. Yeah, him!”

“Wha?” Zero sat up in his chair. An exclamation point flashed across his helmet. “Me?”

“He’s a great dancer. They both are,” Blue added as Synox cleared his throat. “Uh...Dioxis and Nil make quite the pair.”

If she wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t a minister, Aava might have committed murder. At the very least, she let herself fantasize, reaching for her empty glass for those last dregs. If she was lucky, there’d be enough to teeter her over the edge to blackout and she wouldn’t be forced to relive all... _this._ Whatever it was.

The Nautolan and the clone bid farewell, as did the rest of their group. As soon as they were out of earshot, Blue ducked his head under the table and retched violently.

Whatever it was, she couldn’t think up synonyms for _bad_ quickly enough.

 

*

 

“I can’t believe Minister Blue volunteered me as one of the dancers.”

“Sy, hon...how many times do I have to--that was you.”

Whoever booked their tickets, despite missing a glaring detail, managed to snag one of the nicer suites, a two-bedroom setup joined by a small lounge space. Perched on one of the couches, Aava watched Synox alternate between stiff pacing and not-so-inconspicuous staring into one of the bedrooms.

“I must beg to differ,” he said. “That does not sound like something I would do.”

“You mean you weren’t trying to impress that clone?”

“I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Say that all you want,” she sighed. “Doesn’t change the fact you have to dance.”

He didn’t bother to even throw a glance her way, focusing all of his attention toward the bedroom in question. From where she sat, Aava couldn’t see into it, but the noises the last couple hours were enough to convey exactly as much information as she needed. The mysteries of the Force were nothing next to how Blue’s knobbly little body could possibly have held all that it kept shoving back up.

Curious, she slid herself to the other end of the couch and propped her chin up along the back--Zero sat on the edge of one of the beds, his flesh hand rubbing small circles on Blue’s back. Blue, who was curled on his side, almost around Zero’s hip while still within range of the trash can. Blue, youngest minister of the Empire, a tornado of pure ambition, nauseous and clinging and _vulnerable_.

Aava frowned.

“I agree,” Synox whispered. “This doesn’t bode well for the mission timeline at all.”

Aava’s frown deepened, and despite knowing better, she reached out with the Force--it fizzled around Zero, and Blue was in that bubble, a stark hollow in a map used to stretching across all of creation.

Her frown couldn’t go much deeper, but she tried anyway.

“Call up to the front desk and see if they can send us down three bottles of Youngling-Lite,” she said.

“Youngling-Lite is for younglings.”

“ _And_ grown adults with hangovers. Have you never let loose even once?” Aava glanced up at him, already well-aware it had been foolish to ask. “Of course not.”

Still: Synox made the call, and within a couple minutes a Quarren steward delivered not three but _five_ bottles of sickly-purple Youngling-Lite that, theoretically, was supposed to taste like jogan fruit. Two of the bottles drained down Blue’s throat and it was the first thing he’d managed to keep down since their kneejerk bender began.

“So we have to be consistent,” Aava said to Zero while Blue was putting himself back together--alone this time, reassembling his towering sense of dignity. “If he told those two back at the ballroom that you and Sy are our entrants, then--”

“Yeah, makes sense.”

They sat in silence in the lounge with only the occasional hum of running water from the ‘fresher or the passengers in the cabin above them offering any intrusion. Synox jumped at the chance to settle the official competition paperwork, anything to get him out of his personal hell and into something soothing and familiar. If she sought it out, she’d be able to sense his waves of relief through the Force upon being handed a datapad form to fill out.

“So how’s Blue--”

But Zero had skittered into a sentence at the same moment, and Aava let hers take a step back. “What do we have to do, then?” he sighed. “Make some routine up? Shouldn’t be that hard. All the clones learned those line dances, right, so Sy can probably--I don’t know, choreograph something.”

She stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“What?”

“You think Synox-- _our_ Commander Synox--should choreograph a dance routine so we can maintain our cover?”

Just then Blue emerged from the bedroom, hair still damp from the shower and clad only in another terrible pair of cargo shorts. A tank top decorated with tiny Ithorian roses hung from his shoulder and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to put it on.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Blue said. “No, we aren’t doing that. We _cannot_ do that.” He fell into a chair opposite their spots on the couch, stretching in a way that exposed his concave chest, the glaring white skin that made the two scars under his pecs still appear an angry pink after so many years. The hangover must not have left him completely if he was sprawling his body so carelessly in front of them.

“I mean, I don’t know who’s going to make it all up, but it isn’t Synox.”

“It’s a non-issue, really,” Aava said. “The Margengai-Glide has one specific set of steps. It’s complicated, but we don’t have to get overly creative.” They stared at her, waiting for her to explain herself. “What? They usually do it at the Imperial Gala. I’ve seen the other...Hands learning it.”

“So you know it,” Blue said.

“No, actually. I never wanted to go to that thing so I never bothered in the lessons--”

“You--you mean you could’ve been going to the _Imperial Gala_ on a _regular basis_ and you decided _not to_ \--”

About the time a vein in Blue’s temple started to throb, he realized that he was having his latest fit half naked and quickly pulled the tank top over his head. Despite the small size, he was swimming in it.

“The holonet has tutorials.” She kept her voice even and disaffected, not even bothering with trying to speak over him. It only made matters escalate and they hadn’t yet discovered the ceiling on how loud Blue could get.

And she had no interest in discovering how thin the walls between cabins actually were.

“Blue,” Zero sighed, and the tirade stopped mid-word. “Synox just called us up to the main deck. There’s like a...mixer of some sort.”

The news fell at their feet with an almost-audible _plop_ , sucking up all the sound in the room and freezing them where they were until Aava wrenched herself free, swinging her feet to the floor and pointedly clearing her throat. No one had to say anything after that. They knew better.

 

*

 

In the course of her life, Aava hadn’t had the chance to spend much time at the shore of any large body of water, much less one the size of Pantolomin’s massive oceans--the soft teal waters stretched out to the horizon in every direction, uninterrupted by even a smudge of land in the distance. In a galaxy of Felucias, Mustafars, and Rings of Kafrene, it was the first time a planet’s terrain had ever struck her as _alien_.

It would shift into _beautiful_ eventually, but until then, she aimed to position herself closer to the center of the deck than not.

With the mixer going on, she wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the beauty, anyway. There was still the assignment, the looming dread of crowding around a datapad with HoloTube late into the night, but that was assuming they made it through the next three hours without blowing their cover. Nevermind focusing on actually making progress. They still had more than enough time for _progress_.

Aava stood with Synox at a back railing that divided the deck into two different tiers, a large swimming pool below them and a mass of buzzed, chatting people before them. Somewhere in that mass, Zero and Blue were trying to get their hands on something nonalcoholic.

“I don’t know how you can drink another one of those so soon,” Synox muttered, nodding to the black nebula in her hand.

“It’s just the one,” Aava said. “I’m a little stressed.”

“And I must say that I am a bit nauseous.”

She swallowed her retort when she saw the clone from earlier in the day heading their way, nearly choking on it and the sip of her drink she’d just taken. “Sy--we forgot to hide your--” Glancing around, she saw nothing that could help, but then her hand flew to her wide, floppy black sun hat. “Here!”

“Aava, what--”

She shoved the hat on his head so forcefully that the rest of whatever protest he was raising collapsed in a muted _oof_. A small tug to pull it further down over his right eye and no one would be able to peg _this_ clone as the star of a popular children’s show. Not _this_ one. They may have been taken aback by the competition to properly disguise themselves at first, but they could make due. They weren’t incompetent.

They weren’t the kriffing _Mynock_.

“Don’t you need this?” he asked. “You burn faster than Bl--”

“I’m fine.” She pushed up her oversized sunglasses and plastered on a smile. “I promise.”

The other clone waved at them, and she turned that smile--one that the Emperor himself had once lauded as dangerously winning--on him, which he of course took for an invitation to join them. Aava had assumed he was the same clone Synox had practically been hanging off of during their collective bender, but her own memory was hazy--he was leaner than both Synox and Bacta and kept his hair long, she now noticed. Most of it was curled into a bun that had likely been tighter when they first met; loose strands had since pulled free, hanging around his ears and plastered to the back of his neck from sweat.

It was a good look, good enough that it wasn’t marred by his combination of a black mesh shirt and neon blue shorts that fell less than halfway up his thighs.

“Thought that was you!” the clone said as he approached. “How was the rest of your day? Get settled in all right?” The suggestion laid thickly in his tone as he offered Aava and her black nebula a bemused grin. “I realized I never introduced myself, brother. Calling myself Deesco these days. ‘Dee’ works too, really. That’s what Nakaa likes, at least. Dioxis, wasn’t it? What was your designation?”

Dee said all of this in a single breath.

“Yes,” Synox said after a beat. “I’m...Dioxis. I was--uh--CT...CT-1848.”

Dee launched into a line of questioning about whether Synox knew this clone or that clone, when and where they both had served, and if he had any tattoos--Dee pulled down the band of his shorts to show off the wampa on his hip, and Synox looked as if he wanted to have been long dead.

“It was great to meet you,” Aava said, grabbing Synox by the elbow, “but I just found the rest of our group over--uh, there, so we have to be going--”

Behind her, Synox muttered a winding string of complaints to himself that jumped from topic to topic faster than a zagging podracer--the hat didn’t stay on his head quite right, Dee was tarnishing the reputation of all clones everywhere, he still didn’t want to dance, and could Aava stop tugging him along so hard?

She didn’t respond. The deck was sizable enough but not large, and she wanted to put some distance between them and Dee before he talked his way into short-circuiting Synox further and blowing their cover.

“You didn’t see them over here at all, did you?” Synox said once Aava pulled them around the other side of a tall Togruta couple whose montrals nearly brushed the bottoms of the lanterns strung overhead.

“You’re welcome for removing you from the situation, by the way.”

“I was--” Synox cleared his throat. “I was perfectly fine, even if Dee seems to have lost most of his mind.”

“That wampa tattoo was impressive.” It wasn’t--whoever had inked it gave the poor creature all the bone structure of a rathtar--but watching Synox’s sandaled feet squirm was more than worth the lie.

The shorter of the Togrutas suddenly turned behind them, knocking one of the lanterns with a clang, though it barely had time to command attention before Blue’s drawl overtook it.

“All I’m saying, _Nil_ , is that it would make far more sense to--”

“Oh, I hate this,” Aava said under her breath before shoving her way toward the sound of their stupidity and, incidentally, back toward Dee.

Already she missed her hat. The sun was unkind to her Dathomiran complexion even under the cover of Coruscant’s smog, but now she could almost hear herself sizzling. Pantolomin, the best tropical paradise the galaxy had to offer that _wasn’t_ currently being overtaken by top secret Imperial archives! Sunny skies for ninety-five percent of a standard year with all the power to turn her the color of her favorite eyeshadow!

The ire leaked to her face long before she ended up in front of them judging by the involuntary half-step back Blue took immediately after shutting up.

“What happened to your hat?” Zero asked after a beat.

“Our poor planning. Why the kriff are you”--she poked Blue in the chest--“drawing attention to yourself?”

“Ze--excuse me. _Nil_ here had some thoughts on what my role in this endeavour should be, and I happened to disagree.”

“And you wanted the whole ship to know. Wonderful.”

“Was I that loud?”

“If you don’t mind me saying, sir,” Synox’s voice said behind Aava, “it really was.”

A beat, punctuated by the blipping of an ellipsis on Zero’s helmet, processing. “Found the hat,” he said finally.

“ _Why_ is he wearing your hat--”

“You should know,” Aava hissed, pulling Blue closer to her ever so carefully by the strap of his tank top, “since _you’re_ the reason he’s the most recognizable clone in the Empire.”

He barely had enough time to register what was happening before she let go, allowing herself to revel in the tiny thrill that came from giving him a hard time. No, she couldn’t do anything, not really--and especially not with Zero around--but seeing him devolve into some spluttering forced agreement every so often could only help.

Blue cleared his throat. “What I mean is--this can’t be a permanent solution.”

The bickering swelled up immediately. There was some volume control, at least, but the stares of other competitors laid across Aava’s back like digging knuckles, twisting knobs of suspicion offering a path to them through the Force lit as bright as a holodrama premiere. She herded them to a far corner, past the Togrutas, past a couple of what looked to be judges, and placed herself between them and the crowd that she began to scan.

“I have already received three compliments on the hat, so I think we should--”

“What are you going to do during the competition? It’ll hit Zero in the head, the brim is too wide--”

“One of the Mirialans said it…’brought my outfit together’--”

“Oh hon,” Aava muttered over her shoulder. “She was making fun of you.”

Synox stammered, and Blue and Zero must have taken the argument to their private comms--she could still hear their feet stomping and arms waving, Synox’s grumbling about being left out. What she could hear far better, though, was the chatter around the rest of the deck. One of the judges hoping that Dee would be wearing something more professional come time for the competition. A Trandoshan trainer evangelizing--perhaps unwisely--to their new acquaintance about the new Kaiburr Crystals single. The Quarren steward from earlier with their ear to a Twi’lek’s mouth, a Twi’lek with glaringly new clothes and grungy, hole-laden boots--

“That’s interesting,” she said to herself.

“What is?” Blue whispered.

“Later. Are you done?”

“Yeah, we decided--”

“Good. I think we’ve mingled long enough.”

 

*

 

The life Aava had lived had been short and it had never been easy, but this, by far, had to be the most humiliating moment of her life.

“At least you’re not vomiting your intestines out,” Blue said.

“Trust me. I would rather be doing that.”

Without her sunhat, she knew she was going to burn--what she hadn’t known was just how quickly. Her skin was pink enough that she could reasonably pass as human if she wanted to, which she did not want to--nor could she in this state. Upon falling back spread eagle onto one of the suite’s beds, any attempt to stand sent a wave of fire burning down her legs, buckling them in a matter of seconds.

A deep, constant muscle ache was starting to set in, and the only thing the other three in her unfortunate party could apparently manage was gathering around the bed in something like concern. Concern adjacent.

“What do we do?” Synox asked.

“This is not a problem I have,” Zero said. “Look at _him_ \--”

“You know I don’t expose myself like that,” Blue said.

“Can someone please just go to the medbay and get some bacta?” At least talking didn’t hurt. Yet.

Inquisitor Louphan was not going to hear about this. One of these hapless companions of hers was going to get a big jug of bacta and let her bathe in it long before it gets to the peeling stage, and at the next all-Hands meeting next month, she won’t look as if she just fell into the wrong shaft of a spice mine. It was simply not an option, as if Aralina needed another excuse to pointedly throw a raised eyebrow across the room, or Louphan--no. Not the time to reroll that between her fingers.

 _I had no idea Dathomirans were so...fragile_.

Or maybe it was.

“Okay. I’m headed out for the bacta.” Blue stood in the doorway, scowling underneath a pair of sunglasses and khaki bucket hat. “It’s a precaution,” he said to Aava, who just noticed she was fighting off a smirk.

“A precaution for what?” she said once the door slammed behind him.

“Your whole situation, mostly,” Zero called from the central living space. “And to try and disguise him, if that’s possible. You said that steward who came by with the Youngling-Lites was acting buddy-buddy with one of our rebels?”

“It’s what it looked like.” She tried to crane her head to see if she could spot what Zero was rifling through and where, but pulling at the seared skin forced her head back down to the pillow.

“They saw Synox, they saw Blue _with_ Synox...not worth the risk--aha!” He strode back into the room, arms laden with what was definitely makeup but not anything that could have been purchased recently. All of the labels had long rubbed off the near-empty vials and tubes, and most of the brushes’ fibers were bent in some fashion.

He motioned for Synox to pull up the room’s spare chair and sit in front of him. “If we cover up your scar, we should be golden.”

“You can do that?” asked Synox, squirming slightly as a foundation pad hovered over his forehead.

“I’m rusty, not inept.”

And like that, it was nearly silent. Aava closed her eyes, tried to meditate, focusing the entirety of her consciousness into a single pinprick behind her forehead, away from the pulsing ache along her entire body. It was only so effective--this wasn’t useful pain that she could channel into the Force. It just hurt, and the longer she tried to turn away from it, the more present it became until the only thing that could pull her attention away was Louphan’s voice in her ear again, a gloved finger tracing the bottom of one of her red eyes and prodding at her skin until it glared pink from the attention.

“Hm.”

Zero’s grumbling pulled her eyes back open, and whatever she’d been planning to say caught in her throat at the sight of Synox. _Bacta with hair_ , her head screamed, trying to push her into fight-or-flight, but then he muttered something under his breath and the illusion snapped.

“Wh…” she glanced between Synox and Zero, who was making superfluous final touches along his eyebrow. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

Zero paused so suddenly that his cybernetic arm audibly grinded to a halt, but Aava blinked once and he was back poking a sponge around Synox’s cheekbone. “Around. You know.”

“I guess.”

“Are we going to have to do this every day?” Synox sighed.

“Unless you want to get shot by that rebel kid,” Zero said. “Intel report said he’s a karking good sniper.”

If he was so karking good, he could have taken them all out in their suite while rappelling down the outside of the ship. Save them all the trouble.

 

*

 

Dinner passed uneventfully, which Aava counted as a miracle. The bacta bath Blue had successfully acquired brought her searing burn down to a pink one step to the left of her regular skin tone and Synox managed to not scratch at his made-up eye for the entire duration--though from the press of his mouth, he was clearly itching to. They couldn’t even have spoiled their evening through clumsy conversation; the Sullust Planetary Margengai-Glide team shared the other half of their designated table, and none of them spoke Basic. 

Aava knew about four words of Sullustan, but wasn’t keen to share as much.

“So are we going to learn this dance, or what?” Zero tapped the back of his hand against Synox’s chest until he turned to stare; and then when Synox didn’t say anything, Zero tapped harder. “C’mon, the competition’s tomorrow night and we have to be good enough to distract everyone while Aava and Blue are doing actual mission stuff.”

“We’re not going to _win_ , Agent Zero.”

“Not with that attitude.”

They griped at each other until Blue pulled up a passable HoloTube video on his datapad and motioned at everyone to pipe down for a moment. “It has the most views, so I’m assuming…” Blue trailed off as Zero propped his head in his hands over Blue’s shoulder.

The video’s opening title transitioned to a stylish man with dark skin and a cape strutting aimlessly down a contained hallway in some studio. “Hello, esteemed citizens of the galaxy. My name is Lando Calrissian, and I’m here to teach you the ways of the margengai-glide.”

Aava hated it already.

They watched the video through in full one time just to take it all in; the next time, Zero and Synox stood behind the couch and tried to follow Calrissian’s instructions in the abstract, not with each other, each of them holding their arms up to an invisible partner and vaguely swaying and twisting across the carpet.

“This is embarrassing. You two are embarrassing,” Aava said after the third run-through. “You need to be practicing with _each other_. Look--” She pointed at the screen where Calrissian was dancing with his partner, a human with an AJ^6 implant. “We’re not going to get anywhere doing any of...whatever this is.”

Synox and Zero frowned at each other, and suddenly Aava found herself on the other side of a coffee table from Blue, and then a couch, and then another couch as they tried to make room for an actual rehearsal space.

It was midnight and they all needed sleep none of them would be getting.

And then it was two in the morning, and they’d barely gotten down the basic choreography--Zero always missed a distinctive hip twist in the first third of the dance, and Synox could never get his feet in the right position in the lunges after the dip, and neither of them was dependable in the finishing series of spins.

Three in the morning, and Aava was following after the two of them twirling circles around the living room, clapping and yell-counting in their ears to keep them on beat--an impossible task--while Blue massaged his temples.

“No no no,” Aava growled. “You cross that leg over his on _three_ , not the and of two!”

“Do you want to try then, if you know it so well?” Zero said with an angry emoticon flashing across his helmet.

“And waste time? I’m not the one competing tomorrow!” she said. “Look--Blue’s found videos where professionals flub the third set of jumps and get off-beat at least once in the final stretch, but they nail everything else.You _have_ to nail everything else if you don’t want to expose us.”

Tension sparked along the edge of the oblong circle they formed--taut and frazzled wrapping around Blue, Synox’s a dark bass, and then Zero, another dead end under his whirring cybernetic soles. Three rotations to that dead end, the tension cracked and Aava’s shoulders let themselves tease out a building knot.

“Fine. _Fine_. You’re right,” Zero muttered. He tapped a finger against his helmet where an eyebrow would have been. “Synox, you need to see that one move from another angle. Maybe if you watch it in slow-mo with me and Blue--”

“H--what?” Blue said. Aava hadn’t realized he had been slouching until he sat straight back up, sending a few of the decorative throw pillows tumbling to the floor. “Me dancing? No. Bad idea. Like Aava said, there isn’t enough _time_ , and--”

“You don’t think you can do it?”

The tension flooded back tenfold and wove its way around just the two of them until it pulled tightly enough to disappear completely into Zero’s void.

Blue’s fingers twitched toward his eyewear’s keyboard, but only just. “No, I know I can’t. You’ll notice I didn’t volunteer myself for this ordeal, even while I had less control of my common sense. Someone with less self-knowledge than I have might not have been able to say the same.” Almost as an afterthought, he pulled his chin up a bit.

“There are only five hours until breakfast,” Synox said after a moment.

And back to work they went.

 

*

 

“See, as is custom, there’s a whole slew of events leading up to the actual competition that most teams send at least one person to, like the press conference and the Distinguished Veterans Bruncheon and all that, but they’re not _mandatory_ , per se. Tradition can be a hell of a strong arm, though, if you know what I mean--” 

Dee had been going on like this for nearly an hour; the stewards milled about the buffet table clearing the last of the plates and piling the tablecloths up to be exchanged before the hall’s next event, and a number of them were giving their lone still-occupied table the stink eye. (Though, to be fair, maybe that was just how Talz eyes looked.)

“--so like you said, if Nil and Dioxis need more time to get ready for tonight, that’s just fine and dandy, but heads are going to turn a bit if you two don’t show your faces at least once.” Dee scratched at his temple with the back end of his fork, pulling the first of the day’s flyaways out of his bun.

“Well, I think we can skip the press conference,” Aava said before Blue could get any bright ideas. She didn’t trust him to fight his ambitious instincts in the pursuit of actually maintaining their cover in front of Imperial-funded sports reporters. “The bruncheon sounds fine, though. Don’t you think so, Red?”

“Hm?” Blue pulled away from whatever he was reading on the holopad embedded in his glasses. “Oh--uh, yes. We’ll make an appearance at the bruncheon, shake some hands, try some finger food. Should be fine.”

Under the table, Aava’s comlink buzzed as a computerized voice read Blue’s message in her ear: “ _The rebels are more likely to be there, wouldn’t you agree?_ ”

Even the monotone managed to convey his smarmy attitude enough that she wanted to kick him under the table.

“You’re not wearing _that_ to the bruncheon, I hope?” Dee nodded to Aava’s ensemble: a pair of Blue’s shorts that fell past her knees and one of Synox’s Scarifian shirts halfway unbuttoned, offering a view of her most elegant black bralette.

“Of course not,” she said lightly. When it seemed as if he was waiting for further explanation, she offered a brief flash of a grin. No one outside their crew needed to know Synox had spilt one of the extra bottles of Youngling-Lite on her open suitcase at five in the morning. The situation was on its way to resolving itself anyway.

Finally Dee tore himself away from the table, still yammering on about the day’s festivities and Nakaa and the previous year’s champions and the apparent prodigy of a young boy on the other first-time squad--

“Wait--” Aava called after him, but he was already on the other side of the doors.

Blue cleared his throat. “That went well.”

Grabbing him by the elbow, she pulled him in the opposite direction, toward the entrance to the back deck. “C’mon.”

Thankfully, the deck was abandoned aside from a bored Ithorian steward polishing a glass behind the bar more as an attempt to look busy than anything else; the shaded areas were readily available to both of their relief, but if looks could burn they still would have been in trouble.

“‘Red’? Really?” Blue huffed.

Aava rolled her eyes and pointed at his hair. “If we were going to be as creative as _you_ were with the other two--”

“Fine.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What, so we go to the bruncheon as--”

“Me as the trainer, you as the manager.”

“...okay,” he sighed. “Fair enough. And what then? We just…”

Stars, Blue was awful at this. He was _terrible_ , turning his entire body this way and that to check if the Ithorian was noticeably listening in, or if anyone had slunk up behind them, or even if there was a blaster to his head. If the Ithorian didn’t know they were trying to plan something discreetly, they did now.

And Aava almost felt an emotion toward him, something with a foot in pity and another in annoyance, but not quite. Regardless, it only lasted a moment.

“We just…” he hissed, barely under his breath, hardly the whisper he thought it was, “see if we can spot the rebels?”

A headache was starting to set in, an awful combination of glaring sunlight and grating personalities tapping an ice pick directly into her temple. “Discreetly. We need to be discreet. See how quietly I’m talking? Try it some time.”

 Blue’s frown deepened, but he said nothing in the space she allotted for him.

“Dee mentioned the young boy on the other new team,” she said. “He’s likely who we need to watch out for.”

She waited half a second for the information to sink in, Blue’s furrowed brow easing up like a lightbulb flicking to life in the old holocartoons, and she yanked him with her to the Ithorian’s bar. That winning smile would have to make up for his stuttering. The general hold of his lanky frame when he found himself in over his head. His utter lack of espionage skills.

 _With that grin, you could probably bed even that stuffy anxious academic our ally in the Chiss Ascendancy adopted_ , Vess once grumbled. Damn right.

“Two shots of Chandrilan raava,” she said, holding eye contact as she slid the credit chits to their spindly fingers. Blue’s gaze on the exchange skidded across her skin, static, until she pulled back just long enough to pull the miniature NN-14 out of her hip pocket. Her hand concealed the bulk of it, but the barrell peeked out just past the ends of her fingers; Blue’s static turned sharp with panic, doubling down under the added weight of the bartender’s own alarm.

“We’d also like some information,” she said. The smile never wavered.

The Ithorian stammered into a question almost immediately, the translator affixed to their collar hopping to life on a two-second delay. “ _What could I possibly--wait, the rum_ …” Their hand shook as the rum fell into the glasses and into a pool on the bar between them. The glasses themselves couldn’t have been shot glasses--they were far too large, but Blue was going to have to suck it up.

(His stomach lurched so hard it rippled through the Force and halfway up her throat, and the thought of being that connected to Blue ever again sent another wave of nausea roiling through her.)

“ _Here_.” The Ithorian nudged the glasses forward. “ _What is it, then? What do you want?”_

The raava stung pepper-bright down her throat as she took the shot. “What can you tell me about the team with the kid?”

“ _Is that was this is? Margengai-glide was never this cutthroat on Ithor--what is_ wrong _with the galaxy these days? Listen, you didn’t hear me say this, but it’s that kriffing Empire--_ ”

Blue, who had been eyeing the raava with disdain, suddenly threw it back like he was an old pro and not the abnormally tall child that he was.

“-- _the moral core of the galaxy is rotting before our eyes, I tell you!_ ”

“Fascinating,” Aava said, and she couldn’t help it--she sounded bored. Whatever they had said as Blue coughed to keep the rum down, they probably deserved it. “Tell us what you’ve heard about the kid--”

“--and we won’t turn you into the ISB for sedition.” Only at times like these, in his element, could Aava believe that Blue did have an ounce of skill hidden on him. He said it with such calm, such steady force, that she almost forgot who was really standing next to her.

(Almost.)

Gulping, the Ithorian steadied themselves. “ _His team is managed by a pair of Twi’leks, and he’s dancing with a Gran that--stars, I don’t know, saw the worse end of the Clone Wars or something. Deoss knows one of the Twi’leks from somewhere before he took this job--Jendar, Jedha, I don’t know--and he told me they’re supposed to be reigning champions on Fest but that just doesn’t sound--”_

They cut themselves off with a half-frenzied look between Blue and Aava. The suspicion was rolling off of the two of them in waves, butting up against the Ithorian’s own. After a moment, Aava nodded and repocketed the blaster, trying not to acknowledge the _we’re watching you_ gestures Blue threw the Ithorian’s way as they maneuvered back to their cabin.

“We’re barely going to have enough time to get to this bruncheon at this rate,” Aava said under her breath.

“Fest...Fest…who is even from Fest?” Blue said behind her.

“Lots of people, actually.”

“Before the Clone Wars, maybe. You know Fest is one of the top planets under watch for illegal emigration?”

She didn’t, but given what a couple of marks had told her about the isolated planet, she didn’t have any reason not to believe him. So many worlds had been ravaged over the last few decades--why wouldn’t a nowhere like Fest be among them? As they made their way through the hallways, a human with a stereotypical upper-class Coruscanti haircut barely hid an upturned lip at the sight of her, not knowing who she was to the Emperor, just that she wasn’t human. Not where she was supposed to be, lightyears away on a steaming red-lit planet that, at this point, would hardly feel like home.

And for the second time in an hour, Aava felt an emotion toward someone she’d rather not spare them for--this time the nameless Festian boy and the long stretch of space between him and the world he may never return to. It lasted even shorter than the first, too short to properly identify it, before she squashed it under the heel of her sandal.

 

*

 

Aava never cared if her wardrobe pulled the attention of the women-inclined among the crowd like a gravity well--it was never the point. The point was that she has specific aesthetic tastes regarding her own appearance, and if that happened to draw the eyes of those she might be tempted to take back to her room later, that was an added bonus.

But after being stuck in Synox and Blue’s cast-offs all morning, she let herself revel in the careful, tucked-away stares when she walked into the bruncheon in her sleeveless, low-cut, form-fitting maroon jumpsuit. It was her least favorite article she had packed, but the deep blush from someone she identified as a senator from Corulag shooed that pesky fact away.

“Don’t say anything stupid, okay?” she murmured to Blue. “We’re at table four. The meal starts--”

“In fifteen minutes. I know,” he said. His shoulders squirmed; he hadn’t packed a single piece of clothing that wasn’t embarrassing vacation wear, so he’d stolen pants and a jacket from Zero’s suitcase. They didn’t fit, and leather hardly suited him. “I hate this.”

“Yep.” She patted him on the back with as much support and empathy as she could fake, sliding past the Corulag senator and into a tight circle of human women bombarding two Twi’leks with questions.

“So what _is_ Ryloth like this time of year--”

“I’ve heard some of your people have been involved in rebel activity, you wouldn’t happen to know anyone by the name of--”

“Believe it or not, we’ve never met a Twi’lek before, so--”

Aava would believe that; what she wouldn’t believe was that the two Twi’leks she’d been keeping an eye out for were the first two she’d stumble into.

“I knew a scientist once,” one of the women said. “I think he knew someone who was a Twi’lek. Do you know a L--” 

“Ladies…” The taller of the two Twi’leks held up both of her hands, a serene grin coming to her face that accentuated the deep gold of her skin. “You’re so curious about us that we hardly had the time to tell you how we’re both _such_ big fans of yours…”

Had she not been a mark, Aava would have made notes to try to recruit her to the ISB--the deft change in subject, the easy lies, they all handed over control of the situation on a silver platter. The women were chatting away to each other about the glory of their own competition days when the two Twi’leks made eye contact with Aava across the circle. _Humans, am I right?_

One calculated eyeroll later and the Twi’leks were in her pocket.

“I’m sorry,” the golden Twi’lek said, cutting across one of the older women. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Ah--Evie,” she said. Her skin was even a harsher white against that gold as they shook hands. “I’m training the--”

“First clone-Gank team the competition’s ever seen, correct?” The other Twi’lek let a slow smirk creep across her deep violet face, letting a few sharpened teeth peek through. “That’s different."

Aava smiled tightly and let the rest of the circle swarm back over the conversation. In listening to the cluttered din, she plucked up a few key pieces of information: the Twi’leks’ were going by the names Adila and Poma; the oldest of the human women there was set to receive a lifetime achievement award from Senator Pamlo of the planet Taris, a suspected rebel sympathizer; and the Gran on Adila and Poma’s crew couldn’t handle his grog.

“Look, Ilsk took a _sip_ of Port in a Storm and needed to sit down,” Poma said. One of her extensively long lekku slipped off her shoulder, and she took steady care through the fog of her pink nebula to drape it back into its old position. The tattooed markings along her skin sat almost black against the purple, and under any other circumstances--

 _Get it together Arek_. Those teeth, though…

“Anyway,” Adila reached across the circle and laid a hand on Aava’s shoulder. “I wish Dioxis and Nil the best of luck tonight. I don’t know about everyone else, but Ilsk and our boy are going to be pretty tough competition, I think.” Her grin was almost disarming, sunny as the rest of her, but Aava knew better.

“And the same to you,” she said lightly. _They didn’t say the boy’s name, they’re probably using real names for the rest of them, Zero can dig through the records once this is all over_ \--

Suddenly bony fingers curled around her wrist--Force, she was going to tell Blue off for all of this later--and pulled her to table four. “The bruncheon is starting,” he whispered, and not subtly.

Aava glanced toward the makeshift stage the crew of the ship had put together since breakfast. Senator Pamlo was chatting casually with the Corulag senator whom Aava now recognized as Zafiel Snopps. Despite being a few inches shorter, Senator Snopps tried to lean over Senator Pamlo as they spoke, but she hardly appeared bothered, taking care to adjust the scarf draped over her short dark hair.

“Hear anything interesting, Red?”

“Jabba the Hutt is still alive and kicking,” he sighed. “I mean, not literally since he doesn’t have feet--”

Aava reached into the basket of rolls at the table’s center and stuck it right between Blue’s teeth as he bemoaned some other piece of useless Outer Rim politics he was forced to listen to. “Pay attention to Pamlo,” she said quietly as the entire team from Gamorr settled into the chairs around them. “There’s probably something useful there for you after this thing’s done.”

Blue grumbled something that sounded a lot like, _since when do you do my job for me_ , but he kept an eye on her just the same between bites of the roll.

The food was good, at least, so by the time they were headed back to the rooms, there were minimal points to complain about. Of course, that didn’t stop Blue, but Aava managed to tune them out until the door clicked shut behind them. The cabin was empty, the suitcases upended in new places, so Synox and Zero had definitely been back at some point.

“I think…” Blue sighed, dramatically draping himself over one of the couches. “I think I might be worried about their chances tonight. Not that I think they’re going to win, mind you,” he said. “That’s ridiculous. No, I mean…”

Aava sat on the couch opposite him and kicked her heels off. “Yeah?”

“What if they make Zero take his helmet off?”

Aava blinked a bit, but he kept going--

“I’ve been scanning the rest of the teams and none of them have even one prosthetic, much less some helmet they wear with--you know,” he said, waving his hand. “The emojis.”

“You like the emojis. I thought,” she added.

Blue frowned. “That’s entirely beside the point. It’s lightyears from the point.”

His voice had gotten quiet, quiet and lacking the unearned confidence he paraded around the _Bluebird_ pinned to his chest like some kind of medal, and something about it felt like the whole of Pantolomin shuddered on its axis, stressing the gravity for a single moment to its breaking point.

“He’ll be fine,” she said finally. “I’m surprised you’re not more worried about Synox blowing the operation.”

“Why would I be worried about Synox?”

“Because he’s Synox.”

He snorted, waved away her point with a lolling hand. “He’s fine, and he’s going to continue to be fine. I’d be worried if they’d needed to check in--which, if you notice, they haven’t.” He shifted in his ridiculous pose. A squirm at the shoulders, tossing one leg over the top of the couch’s back.

“So you’re only worried about Zero?”

“What am I supposed to do without my bodyguard, Aava?” he said, and just a little too quickly to pass off as casual.

Before long, the sun started to press down on the horizon, teals shifting into something glinting and fiery, both of their comms lighting up--from Zero. Blue’s own buzzed with a custom ringtone, a jaunty tune he didn’t bother to turn off as he read the message fighting to zip Zero’s jacket back up. “Kriff, we have to go,” he muttered.

“Wh--and what for?” Aava called from one of the bedrooms. As if he was going to get her to go anywhere with her custom red eyeshadow incompletely applied.

“He says there’s a Threat Level Auresh.” Something crashed and cracked on the ground as Blue hopped past the doorway pulling on a shoe, cursing loudly before his body hit the floor with a dull thud. “Vaping _hell_ \--”

Thankfully her work with a brush was fast. She stood over Blue, arms crossed and waiting for him to stop rubbing his knee and get his act together. “And do you want to tell me what Threat Level Auresh is?”

“It’s a potential blown clover,” he sighed. “Now will you help me the kriff up?”

 

*

 

Under any other circumstances, Aava would have been impressed.

Zero, with his cybernetic enhancements and sleek helmet, could come off effortlessly chic and put-together in any ratty ensemble pulled from a cantina lost-and-found. The way he held himself--at least before he managed to open his mouth under that HUD--slid in perfectly with whatever the youth in the Core were calling “cool” these days. And he didn’t even have to _try_.

Synox was a karking mess outside of the Imperial hierarchy on a good day, but today--again, under any other circumstances--was an incredible day for Cool Synox. The clothes were a tad tight but as they were told, Dee fixed him up nicely. The navy leather slacks sat snug on his hips, the deep-v of the collar dipping just low enough to make a gaze or two linger as he passed; it was beyond clear Synox hated it.

But that wasn’t the issue.

The issue was--

“The shoes,” Nakaa sighed, as if she was explaining this for the tenth time in as many minutes. “I simply cannot understand how you can be a competitive margengai-glide team and forget the following partner’s shoes!”

“We, uh--we…” All eyes had fallen on Aava. Synox and Zero must have long given up, and Blue--no, couldn’t rely on him for anything with _shoes_. “We packed in a hurry. A scheduling mixup--”

“It’s just...unheard of!” Nakaa frowned at Aava, staring at Zero’s unshod metal feet as she ran her fingers along the end of the ribbon woven around her head-tresses. “Like you’ve never done this before--”

“Oh, we’ve done _this_ before,” Aava said quickly, motioning to Zero. “Nil is a little scatterbrained so it’s not uncommon for the shoes to be thrown in right as we head out the door--by me, as it were but…” She shrugged. Nakaa met her gaze with narrowed eyes, a grumbled pulse in the Force. “I was off-planet and met them on the way.”

And she waited. Any manipulation of Nakaa would be too risky, what with Dee standing right beside her and more of their friends mulling about by the minute; a couple Force-sensitives were in the mix, their hands carefully resting on the web wrapped around them all and waiting for a string to hum.

“You’re awfully relaxed about being disqualified.”

 _Kriff_.

“Surely--” Blue cut in. “Surely there’s a way to rectify this.”

“Red is right!” Dee said, clapping Nakaa on the back. It only deepened her frown. “It wouldn’t be in the spirit of the margengai-glide not to lend a hand to our fellow dancers. Now, we all remember the tournament on Rodia six years back, and how--well, maybe not… yeah I’m not seeing a flicker of recognition in this one’s face.” He elbowed Synox in the ribs playfully, a baby Loth cat scampering around a duracrete wall. “It’s a long tale. Anyway, Nil, you and I look like we have the same size feet!”

Dee reached into his bag and pulled out blood-red pumps that would have put the nicest pair in Aava’s closet to shame. They gleamed with a clean, slick brightness even under the dim lighting from toe to four-inch heel.

“...thanks!” Zero said after a moment. The HUD couldn’t hide the squeak in his voice.

“Well, go on! See if they fit!” Dee shoved the heels into Zero’s hands.

Zero worked carefully, bracing himself on Synox’s unwavering shoulder as he tried not to betray that he’d never worn anything like this before, that Nakaa’s suspicions were right, that they were there undercover and that two Rebel Twi’leks with blasters tucked somewhere into their ensembles were primed to put a bolt between their eyes.

Or so Aava guessed; Zero was, after all, impossible to read. There was a chance she was projecting.

“It’s perfect!” Dee clapped his hands together. “You two go on before us, so just find me after you’re done and we should be right as rain!”

With a vice grip still on Synox, Zero stood in silence as Dee and Nakaa made their way to the other side of the hall. “Are they gone?” he said.

“Far gone,” Synox said.

“Get me a chair.”

Aava spun around to find if not a chair, then _something_ for Zero to sit on, and found instead that Blue had wandered off toward the bar and was halfway to his first sip of a bantha blaster. “Hey Red, grab that stool next to you and get over here!”

Blue glanced up, eyes drawn immediately to the new reaches of Zero’s helmet, then down to the heels where they landed with the crash of his drink shattering on the floor. The Force burned around him, a flash in the pan that was left simmering hotter than the burst itself.

“Great, he thinks we’re done for,” Zero muttered to himself.

Aava turned back around. “Um--”

“There’s some room at that table over there, so he’s fine where he is.” Zero nudged his way between a couple of Niktos to a table occupied only by one of the Sullustan team members nodding off into their elbow. Not once did Zero stumble--the heels seemed to force him to abandon the clunky gait he used around the _Bluebird_ , honing it until the only word Aava could think to describe it was _graceful_.

He might have now been graceful, but the heels didn’t cure stupid.

Synox followed after him, and a moment later Blue breathlessly appeared at Aava’s side.

“That’s, uh… that’s a good look for him, don’t you think? I mean, it’s practical if you could weaponize the heels in a brawl. But--” Blue sighed, tried to cover it up as catching his breath, but the burning around him surged in the Force. “It’s good. It’s a good look. It’s really. Good.”

Over the shoulders of the Niktos, Zero was visibly sulking; the heels couldn’t cure stupid in the least.

 

*

 

Four teams were on before Zero and Synox took the floor, and the recon mission with Blue would have been miserable under the mildest of circumstances. With his Force signature approaching the chaotic levels of Tryst Valentine, she began to fantasize about being stationed at the Empire’s outpost on Esfandia--on a planet with no sun, no one can see your murderous intent toward your colleagues.

“Two marks spotted at two o’clock,” Blue murmured.

“Well-aware. They’re hard to miss.”

Adila and Poma stood at the far corner of the dance floor, each clutching shining silver drinks with the finest in Corustanti fashion hugging their Rebellion-honed curves. Procured from a heist, undoubtedly. Even Inquisitor Louphon didn’t have the budget for such things, and who could suspect the Twi’leks with the shimmering dresses and silver rings around their lekku of being among the ranks of the grungy rebels that graced Imperial news every evening?

“You see the others?”

Aava fought rolling her eyes. “As I told you five minutes ago, and five minutes before that, all of the teams are going to be--”

“Paraded out, yeah, yeah,” he sighed. “Thought maybe I’d missed it.”

The only caf available at this time of night was in the steady supply of black nebulas from the bar, and Blue’s system wasn’t built for it. She swallowed a handful of barbs about his unique brand of absent-mindedness when his liver didn’t have its head in its hands; he wasn’t drunk, but--

“I feel like a Hutt bodyslammed me,” he said. “But ten days ago, so nothing hurts, but it’s still not quite right.”

The image brought a grin to Aava’s face. “They don’t move fast enough for it to qualify as a bodyslam.”

“Wh--I don’t know, maybe they just fell on me and I didn’t get out of the way. I wasn’t--who’s that talking to Poma?”

The ship, while impressive, wasn’t carrying its full capacity of passengers and crew for the special occasion of the competition, and by that afternoon Aava had decided that she’d already seen everyone onboard at least twice. While she may not have known their name, she tried to keep tabs on who kept the company of whom, who frequented where, who was too loud for their own good--and the human with his arm draped over the intricate positioning of Poma’s lekku was not among her mental files.

“I don’t know…” she said.

He stuck around long enough for his clothes to register as fancy but well-worn, something from OId Republic Naboo that had made its way to a sad little thrift shop in the Outer Rim. His scraggly beard was patchier than Blue’s last attempt at one, scar tissue cutting it into distinct islands across his jaw.

One remark into Poma’s ear, passed on to Adila, and he was gone with a wink, reappearing in the crowd only to place his full glass of liquor onto the Quarren steward’s tray, back turned to where Aava and Blue stood.

“But that told us enough,” she said. “Come on.”

She grabbed his wrist and started tugging him along toward the opposite corner of the ballroom, at least until he yanked himself free with some complaint she didn’t bother to listen to. Moving casually through the crowd was tricky, but no one seemed to be paying them any mind, even Adila and Poma. Their heads were bent together, talking quietly and letting their drinks grow warm and the condensation slip down their fingers.

Suddenly Blue’s hand was on her shoulder. “Hey--”

She stopped, and less than half a step from where the Quarren stood blocking the door into the hallway. They sighed, a couple of the tentacles lining their mouth curling in contempt, and swung their now-empty tray behind their back.

“The competition is about to begin,” they said.

“Yes, and…” Aava paused. Nothing was coming to mind: no excuse, no threats, no assist from the _useless_ string bean of a minister standing behind her. “We…” She closed a mental fist around the panic surging through her limbs and finally--“We needed to double check with our team over some technical issue with--”

“Nil’s shoes,” Blue said quickly. “It’s very important.”

Whatever the Quarren did with their mouth, it must have been a smirk. “If it’s so important, why are you headed toward the exit furthest from the dancers’ green room?”

Aava and Blue didn’t answer fast enough for them, but it wouldn’t have mattered; from the shadow of the door frame emerged the human man, and closer she could see past the terrible facial hair and to the familiar face beneath it.

“Kriffing Codo,” she said under her breath.

“Hey Arek.” She had forgotten how smarmy his voice was even when he wasn’t trying to pull something over on any of the women within earshot.

“You know her?” the Quarren said.

“That I do.” He looked so pleased with himself the way he looked up and down her body that it was becoming more impossible by the second not to Force-choke him and be done with it. “We’ve had our run-ins… that there you’ve got, Deoss, is a real-life Hand of the Empire.”

Deoss’ eyes lit up, brightening further as they looked to Blue and then past them to the decor for the competition--connecting the dots to form a nice target on all four of their heads. “Do we, now?”

Two small blasters and a short jaunt down the hall later, Aava and Blue found themselves in a locked supply closet guarded by Codo outside--which was bad enough, but Codo insisted on trying to hold a conversation with Aava through the door. _Remember that time_ this, _can’t believe you broke my heart_ that, as if he’d never been on the other end of a honeypot scheme before. If the Rebellion had half an ounce of brain cells to rub between them all, they’d start training their operatives for that sort of thing.

“What rebel floozy are you working on now, Arek, huh?”

“Oh he’s no floozy,” she said. There wasn’t anyone at the moment, but he didn’t know that. And neither did Blue, so she waved away his questioning glance. “He’s making loads of brave and heroic decisions for his cell.” When Codo failed to respond, she let out a fake laugh that was loud enough for him to hear. “Oh, did that hit a sore spot?”

“Why are you antagonizing him?” Blue hissed.

 _It’s fun_ , Aava mouthed back.

But Codo decided to keep quiet. Every so often he’d tap his foot a couple times, shift his weight where he was leaning against the door, but otherwise blessed them with a silence Aava had wished for ages ago when they kept regular company.

Behind them, seeping through the back side of the closet, came the music from the competition’s opening.

“We’re missing it,” Blue said.

“Did you… want to see it?”

Now both Codo and Blue had nothing to say.

She briefly considered letting the matter drop, but Blue’s Force energies this far from Zero had nothing to keep them at bay; they should have been able to make the duracrete floor beneath them glow from the burn alone, radiating further out the longer she sensed Blue was pointedly ignoring whatever was causing it.

And to say _whatever_ when she had a decent idea already--

Not that she cared. Louphan had attached her to Blue’s crew knowing it was her personal hell, and she wasn’t going to care about anything stoking the fire of her personal hell.

But in this state he was _distracting_ , and Aava’s headache didn’t need those extra notches of pain.

“So…” she said after a few minutes. “If we’re not going to rehash just how bad our intel was… or plan some daring escape…” She waited--because maybe, _maybe_ if she gave him an opening, she wouldn’t have to tread further down this other loathsome path--but Blue only huffed to himself. “In that case, uh… what’s going on with you and Zero?”

The air around him cracked. “Come on, Aava, you’re well-aware what the arrangement is. You know what’s going on.”

“I do?”

The pressure built up again, barreling toward another series of cracks that would radiate into her bones, fan this dense, hot air to every Force-sensitive being aboard the ship. “You’ve been with us long enough, haven’t you?”

So he was admitting it--Lord Adnau Wrengan, Minister Blue, was _admitting it_ here before her very eyes in a luxury cruise liner’s supply closet, and she couldn’t even gloat because they were still captured, after all. “I’m happy to hear you’re being honest with yourself for once.”

“For once? I mentioned the fact he was my bodyguard earlier today. And the fact that this hasn’t seem to stuck for you given your time with us is concerning--should we send you to medical to check for memory prob--”

“Wait--”

“Besides, as I’ve proven before,” he said with a sniff, “I am incredibly self-knowledgeable. I can’t be anything _but_ honest with myself.”

She stared, waited for him to look her in the eye. Through the wall behind them, the music for whichever team was currently on had chosen a thick, bassy remix, an irregular beat punctuating the standard melody they heard so much the night before like blasterfire. It almost managed to seep through all the levels of irony Blue was operating under.

“Okay,” she said.

“Good.”

And then a large blaster bolt melted through the lock.

Blue’s body twitched into a knot, and by the time he untangled himself, the smoke had cleared to reveal Codo knocked out on the floor, Synox with all their bags slung over his shoulder, and Zero’s tucking his weapons into the back of his trousers--still wearing Dee’s pumps.

“We’ve been made,” Synox said.

“Well--” Blue stuttered for a moment as he got to his feet, already blushing a deep red and looking anywhere but at Zero’s feet. “ _Obviously_.”

There was a shuttle parked at the back of the ship, an emergency medevac that wouldn’t get them off planet but would at least get them to Pantolomin’s main space port, and Zero had hacked into it as soon as they boarded the day before.

“That’s why I hired you,” Blue said pointedly, jumping into the back seat.

The firefight they’d fled from was barely little pricks of light on the sea, and Zero propped his feet on the dash as soon as the autopilot controls were engaged. The shoes shone under the sun, the red brighter against the stark grey innards of the shuttle.

“So… didn’t give them back?” Aava said.

“I wasn’t going to risk my life to return a pair of shoes. Besides,” he sighed. “I kind of like them.”

Through the Force, Aava sensed something inside Blue coiling tight and dense, absorbing what had burned around him until all that was left was the chill of an absence.

 

*****

 

There had been no word on the location of the _Mynock_ after their last encounter on Phindar, though admittedly, no one had been leaning on their ISB contacts for information as hard as they could have been. The production for Commander Clone was behind schedule, one of the caf machines had been on the fritz--Blue’s favorite, no less--and bits and pieces of their night at the Imperial Gala had orbited his thoughts for the past week. The conversation with Tarkin. Aava and Zero on the balcony. It didn’t sit right, and he thought that if perhaps he let these moments orbit long enough, they would sort themselves into a pattern that made sense and illuminated their true meaning, the deeper messaging behind it all.

One point he keeps coming back to is Zero--specifically, Zero and the dress. He should have just worn the dress and there wouldn’t have been any problem! He still had that clone’s high heels in his bunk somewhere. They could have been the talk of the gala for the _right_ reasons.

His hand jittered on the table, the only sound in his cabin aside from the soft clicks in the holodisplay in his glasses as he scrolled through audience metrics for the show. It sped by in a haze; the numbers were fine, they’d been fine and they would have no trouble getting funding for the next fiscal year, and Zero grew into loving those shoes, why wouldn’t he have jumped at the chance to wear them again?

He looked _good_ in those shoes--they both said as much--so why wouldn’t he want to show them off at the hottest event on Coruscant? Unless it was wearing them _with_ Blue that was the problem, and--

The gnarled core just under his breastbone tightened at the thought, and it was already too tight so his stomach clenched with the excess, and his hand kept on jittering.

That was it. Zero wanted to leave, didn’t he? Find other work that was worth the pay cut, or go after the brother he kept muttered about in his sleep sometimes, or just go as far away from the _Bluebird_ as was physically possible.

Blue could make it happen. He could do that for him. He was a minister, after all, and that came with perks. And he could find another body guard. It was a big galaxy.

Before he knew he’d even gotten up, he’d pushed his way into the cockpit and slammed the door shut. Without a table beneath it, his hand sputtered against his leg, and that was all Zero could stare at when he jumped from the pilot’s seat.

“Blue, what’s--”

“You’re fired.”

He waited for Zero’s HUD to display an emoji but it remained blank.

“That’s what you wanted, right? That’s what you wouldn’t tell me? I figured it out. So you’re free to go. It’s fine.”

The cockpit was cramped; Zero only had enough space to stand a few inches from him, and even at this glorious news for him he refused to move or say anything or--still!--show one single reaction on his helmet. The longer he waited the tighter his chest wound up until he was sure it was a single point, denser than a black hole and ready to swallow him up.

“You think… I want to leave?”

“Obviously! There are lots of reasons to think this, first of all, but it was so clear at the gala that you didn’t want to be there with me--”

“Blue, I _volunteered_ to go with you! Did you forget that very important point?”

“We’d run out of candidates. _And_ you wouldn’t budge on the dress--”

“Kriffing hell, Blue.” Zero’s HUD flashed a red swirl as he stared up at the ceiling. “If you’re not my boss anymore, then I can say what I want, right? Because you’re an idiot.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a senseless idiot.” Zero leaned in closer, Blue’s face burning with what he could only assume was anger, and burning further still when Zero reached up to the sides of his helmet and pulled it off.

Blue didn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this--large parts of Zero’s head was made of dull matte metal plates connecting stretches of hairless flesh down to an intact throat and jaws he’d gotten on transplant. No one who knew what they looked like would have suspected he was a Gank.

Zero’s eyes held fast on him, their sad tinge enough to keep Blue’s questions of _why’d you do that_ at bay. “I think this is Imperial property. You bought it.”

“Not out of their budget,” Blue said. “That was on me. It’s yours. Keep it.”

A pained sound escaped Zero’s throat as he dropped the helmet into the pilot’s seat, his thumbs rubbing circles into two patches of skin along the side of his head. “Why are you like this?”

“Like what? ‘An idiot’?”

Blue’s hands flew up into air quotes; he had something else to say, he knew he did, but whatever it was crashed out of head once Zero grabbed both of his wrists, walked him back to the wall, and kissed him.

Zero had missed his mouth by a inch or so--it was awkward and the angle was wrong and his wrist was heading toward a bruise under the cybernetic hand and for a single moment the running monologue in Blue’s head came to a grinding halt.

“You’re not my boss anymore,” Zero said when he pulled away. “So I could do that.”

Blue could only stare. As his thoughts started back up, they took their time, circling back to that night on Pantolomin: the shoes, the kriffing shoes and the bantha blaster that slipped from his fingers and all the reasons for it that he decided never to consider again in the blink of an eye because how was he supposed to show up to his eventual senior minister promotion ceremony with a male Gank on his arm?

“I--sorry,” Zero said. He released Blue’s wrists and stepped back. “I didn’t mean to--”

But Blue reached for him, one hand landing on a shoulder and the other hovering over the side of his face where metal met skin. “No, I…” Gently he pressed one finger, then two and three on a long stretch of a scar, the jagged borders of the patchwork, and watched as Zero leaned into the touch, his breathing ragged, and finally that terrible knot at the center of Blue’s chest began to unravel.

“I’m going to kiss you again,” Zero murmured.

“You damn well better.”

It was perfect. It was perfect and the whole of Blue’s body fell loose and his jittering hand calmed against the back of Zero’s head and some part of him was aware of certain paths of his career falling away into the abyss of space but he was glad to watch them go, now. He’d see them off at the spaceport and wave a handkerchief in a flurry of confetti like in the old holofilms if this was how Zero was going to guard him from now on--with hands on his hips and in his hair, a body over his body pulling the tangles away.


End file.
